This project presents the simulation and modeling
of a crowd behavior in a virtual environment. Many research and
social interaction aspects of crowd behavior are beyond the reach
of available tools. The VR environment is able to adapt for specific
design situations and provide insight to current perspective as
well as what-if questions. Our hypothesis is that mutual concern,
helping, and co-ordination will more likely occur when crowd members
share a common identity. The selfish behavior associated with 'mass
panic' may occur in evacuation if there is no shared identity. Our
hypothesis is that the visualization studies support the conclusion
that, where there is a strong sense of collective identity, there
will be mutual concern and helping.

View of library Shelves and Avatars

Agents moving towards the goal in library

This project presents the simulation and modeling of a Bowie State
University library building in a virtual environment. The virtual
library building is modeled on a real time library building on campus
at Bowie State University. Depending on the distance between the
agent and the target, different behaviors will gets assigned to
the respective agent. Finally, the seek behavior takes an agent
to the target. The transition lines includes the max script to change
the states of an agent.

Modeling

During emergency evacuation, behavior of people becomes uncertain.
Each agent’s emotions such as stress, anger, and panic are
defined as low, medium, and high. Rules are intuitively designed
based on each agent’s location and speed.

Simulating Behaviors for various agents using cognitive controller
in MATLAB

Behavior List for avatars in 3ds Max

Embedded Video

Embedded video with a virtual environment can be used to show multiple
views for an evacuation visualization task.Embedded video visualizations
integrate video and 3D model data to help users understand complex
situations. Fig. 5show an agent visualizing the embedded video for
exit routes inside the building during evacuation. When evacuating
the building, the user relies more on the embedded videos. We plan
to further explore several designs from the video processing dimension
and the navigation dimension as well in our future work.

Fig.4. View of an avatar visualizing the embedded video during
evacuation.